


Tactile

by HapaxLegomenon



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: (duh), 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Good Brother Ben Hargreeves, Hugs, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Not Beta Read, Substance Abuse, Touch-Starved, We Die Like Men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 14:33:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18251783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HapaxLegomenon/pseuds/HapaxLegomenon
Summary: "After the apocalypse that wasn't, Klaus struggles."Or: Five times Klaus’s siblings tolerated his need for touch, and one time it (and he) was embraced.





	Tactile

**Author's Note:**

> This is set mostly in some nebulous canon divergence where the apocalypse was averted, but the house is still standing. Don't think about it too much.

 

00.01

 

The fun thing about drunk Luther is that he tends to be an emotional drunk. Klaus remembers himself being a happy drunk, until he discovered ecstasy, which made him _ecstatic_ , and then being drunk was more of a means to an end. Though he’d never call himself a picky man -- when both are on the table, he chooses both. Obviously.  

Still. Far be it from Klaus to dissuade sad, sober Luther from drinking himself into sad, drunk Luther. Sobriety is entirely overrated, which is why Klaus has a special chocolate bar in his hand as he’s dancing and humming off-key through their dear departed father’s lovely museum of an empty house. He’s smiling, wide, because wasn’t there some scientist or some shit that said that smiling makes you happy?

Klaus wants to have words with whatever asshole thought that up. It doesn’t work at all. He tries singing, next. Music blocks out the screams even when the drugs don’t, but doesn’t stop the lonely, crawling itchiness under his skin. He entertains a fanciful thought of finding a rave or a seedy motel or something, but alas, it’s ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning and who has the time? So instead, he dances.

Ben says something, his lips moving, but Klaus can’t hear him over the shitty pop music he has damaging his ears, can’t hear him over the wailing, so he just winks and blows a kiss at his brother’s wayward soul perched on the edge of a bookshelf. Ben looks extra solid this morning, which makes sense, considering how damned loud and visible the rest of them are today.

He’s used to Ben perching. Luther’s perching is somewhat more of a surprise.

“Does it count as perching if you’re sprawled all over the stairs, though?” he asks Luther, his rictus grin shifting to something genuinely amused as Luther blinks up at him with that dopey, confused face he gets whenever Klaus or Five so much as opens their mouth. He might also be smiling at the bottle of vodka clutched in Luther’s paw. Good old uptight Luther, letting his hair down, as it were. It’s about time that Luther broke free a little bit and did something rebellious. Klaus’ll drink to that. He squats on the step beside Luther and claims a swig of his own, praying that it’ll be enough to blur out his vision. No such luck. He takes another gulp.

“M’not _sprawled_ ,” Luther mumbles, even though he totally is. The man has body parts on at least five different steps, for Chrissake. Music echoes like tinnitus from the headphones around Klaus’s neck and he mouths along with the words.

“Of course not,” Klaus soothes. He tucks the bottle back into Luther’s hand, who gives it a considering look before taking another sip. “You’re…” he waves his hands, hello-goodbye through the air as he shapes a word he can’t quite call to mind. “You know, draped. Reclined. What’s that fancy word? The one that sounds like cucumber sandwiches?”

“Recumbent,” Ben suggests.

Klaus gasps and claps his hands together. “Yes! Recumbent! Very dignified.” He smiles again at Luther, who looks at him with serious if unfocused eyes.

“Klaus,” Luther starts.

“Yes, my drunk, darling brother?”

In that same solemn tone, Luther says, “You’re funny.”

“Well, I do try. Thank -- oof!” In what is likely intended to be a gesture of fraternal affection, Luther slaps Klaus on the back. Unfortunately, Luther is built like a brick whorehouse and Klaus has the lean physique of a junkie -- who would have guessed -- and so he goes flailing off his toes and faceplants into his brother’s chest.

“Oops,” Luther says, then giggles. _Giggles_. Klaus didn’t think that Luther had the capacity for giggling. What a delightful discovery. They should be drunk together more often. Luther’s hand stays heavy where it is on Klaus’s shoulder, and the itchiness rises to a crescendo at the point of contact until Klaus takes a long, shaky breath through his nose. Luther’s overcoat smells like dusty mothballs. Klaus pushes his face into the coat and tries not to shiver.

It’s hard to feel pathetic about anything after a decade of shoving whatever and whoever he can get his hands on into his body and sleeping in dumpsters, so Klaus feels no shame whatsoever about snuggling with his drunken bear of a brother on the grand staircase of an empty house.

“Klaus,” Ben says, but Klaus ignores him.

Luther has never been gentle with his touches, not with anyone except Allison. Klaus remembers being punched and thrown across the room in training sessions, and smacked upside the head for being too smart-mouthed. He can’t count the number of times that his hands were slapped away from a teasing poke or white-knuckled clinging. Even now, with vodka in his blood, Luther pats Klaus’s shoulder three times, every one hard enough to bruise but with no malice behind it, and Klaus breathes in the mothballs.

“You always were clingy,” Luther reminisces, like it wasn’t something that he hated. Klaus fully expects to be pushed away, but Luther just lets his arm fall, coming to rest across Klaus’s upper back. It’s not quite a hug, but it’s the closest he’s come in, what, months? Years? It feels like eons since anyone in this family touched him with even the slightest bit of affection. He’ll take it.

“Oh, well, pardon me for being the only one in this family to understand what it means to be one,” Klaus shoots back, which is absolute bullshit.

“Bullshit,” Ben says, and Klaus shushes him. So what if he’s lying? It’s a means to an end and Klaus does not have to justify his end to anyone, let alone his dead brother.

So there.

He presses the side of his head harder against Luther’s chest. Why does his stupid brother wear so many layers? Some people are into the whole furry thing, Luther could totally make it work. In fact, Klaus personally knows several eligible bachelors who would love to get their hands on a big old bear like Luther. Joke’s on them, though, because Klaus is here instead, hah hah hah, suck on that.

“I don’t think I understand,” Luther says, and it must be the alcohol talking because Luther never admits to not knowing, not understanding, even when everyone but him can see how lost he is. They’re all just pretending here, aren’t they? Pretending to be a picture-perfect little family, lined up in suits around the table and playing at being superheroes. Pretending to be in control and pretending to hate each other as much as they pretend to love each other.

Klaus wonders if there’s anyone on Earth who could possibly have a more fucked up family than he does. He wonders this as he snuggles with the big, hairy brother he barely knows while attempting to ignore pointed looks from the brother who died thirteen years ago and he can hear their robot mom humming somewhere upstairs.

He also hears the dry muttering of a ghost with a bloody gash across its throat, the chants of his name from ruined mouths in sallow faces, the distant screaming from the mausoleum. He swallows a whimper and squeezes his eyes tight, willing them away, willing them all away.

“Klaus, ask him for help.” Ben sounds exasperated, but Ben usually sounds exasperated when Klaus is high and suffering and ignoring him.

“Shut up,” Klaus hisses.

Ben raises an eyebrow. “Make me.”

“Oh, sorry,” Luther says.

“What the hell?” Diego says from somewhere below them. Klaus doesn’t know when Diego got there, the sneaky little bastard, but he also doesn’t care.

He doesn’t care because he’s found what he’s looking for -- _finally_ , and maybe he should ask Allison to get Luther to wear thinner shirts or something -- and he fists a desperate hand into Luther’s coat and holds on, the _thump-thump-thump_ under his ear washing through him like a balm. Or like a really good trip. He sighs and slumps and feels a wet trickle down his cheek.

Luther, on the other hand, shifts and his body tenses in reaction to Diego’s entry and Klaus wants to scream.

Actually, screw it.

“No!” he yells. It comes out muffled, but he doesn’t care. Without looking, he points. First, upwards towards Luther’s face. He thinks he might have jabbed his fingertip into his cheek or something, because Luther grunts, but Klaus doesn’t stop. “You, don’t move. You,” he swings his hand in the vague direction of the front door where Diego probably came from, “shut up and go away. We’re busy. And you,” pointing towards the ghost of a homeless man who died on the sidewalk in front of their house seventeen years ago, “also shut up and go away. I am _so_ over listening to dead people today.”

“Ouch,” Ben deadpans.

Klaus waggles his fingers. “Not you, you’re a delight and I love you.”

“What the hell?” Diego repeats.

Klaus feels Luther shrug. “We drank some vodka,” he says, like that’s the part of this picture that Diego’s having trouble with.

“How much?” Diego asks, incredulous.

Luther considers for a moment, then shrugs again. “All of it?” he offers.

Klaus, for his part, has stopped listening to the conversation, because he can hear and feel Luther’s heartbeat, strong and steady and oh so _alive_ , and he can’t explain it to them, has given up on trying, but sometimes he needs to know that he’s not the only one left alive in this shithole of a world. Sometimes he needs the reminder that he’s not one of the ghosts that haunt this godforsaken mansion. He covers his other ear -- goodbye, world -- and just listens to the steady beating of his brother’s heart.

 

00.02

 

After the apocalypse that wasn’t, Klaus struggles. He needs to get sober, to get clean because he promised Dave. Not to his face, of course, because they found each other in the jungles of Hell where heroin was more accessible than candy and nobody wanted to block out the world more than the kids drafted into a faraway war, but after. He whispered it into the cobblestone dirt next to a broken briefcase, that he’d do it to see Dave again. God, he’d do just about anything to see Dave again.

It’s a lot harder than he expected. Sue him. He can’t just undo two-odd decades of hardcore substance abuse with the snap of his fingers, even with love as a motivator. He’s been almost-clean for a week and every day is harder than the last and he considers rehab, again, but it never really helped much anyway.

“Step one is admitting you have a problem,” Ben reminds him, because Ben’s been through rehab as many times as Klaus has. “Congratulations. You passed.”

“First time ever,” Klaus gasps, and giggles. He holds up a hand like he’s waiting for Ben to high-five him, pauses, then slaps it with his other hand. Yeah, that’ll work.

“You need a support system,” Ben says. “Remember?”

“And what are you? The ghost of chopped liver?”

“Maybe try someone more tangible.”

Klaus sticks his tongue out at his dead brother. It’s a little less ridiculous when Ben mimics him, because Ben is technically still a child and also invisible to everyone but Klaus, but they’re both far too old for it to be anything but weird. That’s fine. Klaus has never been anything else, anyway.

“And who might you suggest, oh wise spirit? I’m not sure if you remember, but our family has the collective emotional intelligence of a can of cream of broccoli soup. Probably less, actually. At least soup is comforting, you know, on a cold winter’s eve.” He pauses for a moment. “I’m hungry.”

If he can’t fill the empty hole in his gut with drugs or Dave, he might as well fill it with fast food.

Diego chucks a knife at him when Klaus comes barrelling into his room, sing-songing, “Oh brother dear, my body grows weak with hunger and I desire not the shitty sandwiches in the kitchen.” The knife misses, which is how Klaus knows that Diego is annoyed rather than actually angry because if he wanted to hit Klaus, he would have. “Give me your car keys.” He makes grabby hands. Diego politely refuses.

“No way in hell.”

Klaus pouts at him. “Come oooooon, Diego! I’m hungry!”

“Go make a sandwich.”

“Did you miss the part where I mentioned ‘shitty sandwiches’ or…?”

“Klaus,” Ben interrupts, “look at him.”

“I _am_ looking,” Klaus says, then actually does.

It’s strange, to look at his siblings and actually see a resemblance. None of them were even born in the same country, let alone to the same parents, but there’s an angry grief in Diego’s expression that Klaus recognizes oh so keenly from his own mirror.

Yay, family.

Let it never be said that Klaus lacks self-awareness -- he gives himself a tomato on the comforting soup scale. Delicious with a cheese sandwich, otherwise nobody’s favourite but it’ll do in a pinch. And this tomato soup remembers that he’s not the only one who’s lost someone to this apocalypse fight even if his metaphor is crashing down around him.

“You’re right,” he says with a flounce, “what am I thinking? _You_ should drive. C’mon now.” He spins on his heel and marches off down the hallway, filling his steps with confidence that Diego will follow, because despite what Diego has always said, he is absolutely a follower.

And sure enough, he does. Klaus grins into thin air when he hears Diego’s thumping footfalls.

“I’m not driving you anywhere,” Diego insists, even though by now they both know that Klaus is going to win. Klaus always wins this argument; it’s not like Diego can just let him go, after all, not when Diego has aspirations of law enforcement and Klaus has aspirations of insobriety.

“Oh, sure,” Klaus agrees happily, leading his duckling chain of brothers down the hall. “What are you thinking? Shawarma? Burgers? Ben probably wants Chinese food, right Ben?”

“That’s racist _and_ dead-ist.”

“I’d _murder_ for a Hawaiian pizza,” Klaus continues, unfazed.

Diego mutters, “I don’t know what part of that is worse,” and slides behind the wheel of his little green car. Klaus does a brief and quiet dance of success before popping into the passenger side. Ben leans forward from the backseat and gives Klaus a rare smile. Klaus mimes blowing a kiss in return.

“Stop making kissy faces at your boyfriend,” Diego says, snappish, and it takes the air out of Klaus like a punch to the gut.

“Geeze,” Klaus mumbles, stung despite himself. He scowls out the window. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Diego’s head weave in that exasperated way he does, when he’s annoyed or trying to find a word, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Awkward,” Ben says into the silence.

It isn’t until they’re sitting on the hood of Diego’s car with burgers in hand and a mess of fries on a ripped-open paper bag between them that Diego finally says it.

“Sorry, bro. You, uh.” He pauses, looks out at the river. Klaus sucks a drip of ketchup off his wrist. “You’re having a hard time channeling him, right? Dave.”

Diego says his name like he’s important, like he _matters_ , and Klaus could kiss him. Hug him, anyway, he’ll leave the brother-kissing to Allison, and he really would like a hug, actually. Just, like, all the time, but especially now, with Dave’s dog tags resting against his chest and the greasy burger coiled up tight with the grief in his gut. Klaus sniffles against the surge of guilty failure and drops the burger in his lap to push back the emotions, palms against his eyes. “Yeah,” he admits. Addiction is a disease, they always say at rehab, but nothing these days makes him feel sicker than the thought that he’s letting Dave down. Not even the withdrawal hurts that bad. “I’m trying to get clean. For him.”

Diego starts. He turns towards Klaus with his whole body, his goddamn _temple_ , expression full of surprise and a wary hope that would hurt to see if everything didn’t hurt already. “You are? Why didn’t you say anything?”

Klaus gestures a wide hello-goodbye. “What do you call this?” Ben sits close next to him, a pillar of support, and they both watch his hand fall through Klaus’s knee in a failed gesture of comfort. Stoicism has never been Klaus’s bag and it’s hard enough to keep his eyes from leaking at the best of times, so he doesn’t fight it, lets the tears roll out in pathetic little rivulets. “I miss him,” he tells Diego. Ben already knows.

“Yeah,” Diego says. “I get that.” His voice is soft. Someday, when Klaus gets his shit together enough, he’s going to channel Eudora Patch, too. He wants to meet this woman who stole his prickly brother’s heart. He wants to apologize for getting her killed and thank her for freeing him to meet Dave. He wants to give Diego the chance to say the words that Klaus can see bubbling in the back of his mouth.

Maybe he can prove to everyone -- himself included -- that he can rise above being the family fuck-up, if only for a day or two. That’s all they need.

“God,” he half-sobs. “How do people _do_ this?”

“What?”

“You know,” he waves a hand. “Care. It’s depressing.”

Diego’s lip twitches. “You’ve always cared,” he says.

“Lies and slander.” He’s right, though. Ugh. Klaus hates it when Diego’s right, and Diego is right a lot. Not that he’d ever admit to such a thing. It would be so much easier to not-care, but here he is, crying over losing the love of his life with two of the only other people who, maybe, loved him a little bit, too. “I need help,” he manages to say, hating the taste of the words. “I can’t stop by myself.”

“I can help,” Diego says without a moment of hesitation. Of course not. Diego’s been wanting him to get clean for years. Even dropped him off at rehab a time or two after Klaus was arrested for -- well, various things. “What do you need?”

Isn’t that a question. “My hero,” Klaus drawls.

Diego scowls at him. “I’m serious, asshole.”

For once, Klaus is, too. He smiles at Diego with his best guileless puppy-dog look. Then he scoots sideways on the hood of the car, nudging the fries up against Diego’s leg and knocking more than a few onto the ground, where some gull or other junkie is going to be delighted to find them later. Klaus ignores that in favour of leaning over far enough that his head rests against Diego’s shoulder. It moves gently up and down with the motion of his brother’s breath.

Diego learned how to comfort from a robot, and it shows in the way he stays sitting stiffly upright, how he pats Klaus’s knee two, three, four times.

“We got this, bro,” Diego says quietly.

Klaus doesn’t know if they’ve got this. But at least they’re trying.

 

00.03

 

“Oh Allison,” Klaus sings to the tune of Elvis Costello, “you know this wardrobe is killing me-e!” He pulls a boa from her closet and throws it around her neck and shimmies up to her until their hips are touching and she’s rolling her eyes and hiding a smile. He spins away, dips himself backwards like they’re dancing and flutters his eyelids until her smile breaks through all the way. He grins back. She snatches the boa and swats him good-naturedly.

“No, but seriously,” he adds, “I love the crop-top thing you’ve been rocking, really I do, but _seriously_ , branch out! You’ve worn those pants twice this week! We gotta get you something new. And _I_ want to wear those pants. Gimme.” He gives her his best imploring look, which she ignores with practiced ease in favour of writing something in her notebook. Klaus twists his neck to try to read it.

_GET OUT OF MY ROOM_

“Well, that’s harsh,” he says. He imagines he can hear it in her voice, knows the exact tone from the angle of her chin and the lift of her eyebrows and part of him wonders if voices can have ghosts, because he swears, he _swears_ he can really hear her.

Or maybe he’s just watched enough Allison Hargreeves movies in the last decade to know how she speaks.

Allison points at the notebook again, and Klaus rolls his head back with a sigh. “Yeah, yeah, I’m going, don’t get your fancy panties in a twist. I just _thought_ ,” and here he pauses for emphasis, hands open and welcoming, “that maybe my favourite movie star sister would be up for a spot of shopping? A diva’s day out?”

He raises his eyebrows and waits. There’s an itch under his skin that he can’t get rid of, like he needs to get out of the house and do something, but Diego’s off somewhere and Ben’s too dead to stop him if Klaus faceplants off the wagon and tries to find a dealer. It feels like bugs crawling all over him and he’s stuck -- can’t stay here, can’t leave. He needs a distraction. And he figures Allison probably does, too.

They used to play dress-up when they were kids, him and Allison, trading pieces from their closets and holding quiet fashion shows in muffled giggles during their half-hour of playtime on the weekends. Klaus thought that maybe that’s what he needed today, a new outfit, but there’s nothing of his left at the house, all pawned off years ago. Allison’s clothes don’t fit as well as they used to, what with his lack of curvy bits and all, but he’s found himself a delightfully low-necked blouse and now he just needs the pants to go with it.

_ME AND MY CREDIT CARD, YOU MEAN_ , Allison writes, and Klaus puts a hand to his chest.

“You know me so well,” he says, dripping in sincerity and exaggerated emotion.

Allison actually looks like she’s considering it, and Klaus allows himself a brief moment of hope before her expression closes and she reaches for her throat, the tentative motion tugging at all of Klaus’s heartstrings.

“No nonono,” he croons, and steps into her personal space to cup her face between his hands and look up at her through his eyelashes. “Hey. Hey, hey. We can go in disguise. Ooh, yes, must hide you from the paparazzi. You have an entire drawer of fabulous scarves.” He goes on, getting excited now at the drama of it all, sneaking around with his movie star sister in a headscarf and oversized sunglasses. He whirls away, claps his hands together and points his fingers at her. “Yes! I’m going to dress you. Off with your pants!”

There was this dress he found in her closet that he desperately wanted to wear, halter-necked with a full skirt covered in cherries, but he just doesn’t have the hips for it, more’s the pity. He pulls it out with a flourish. “Hmm?”

She gives him a look.

“I thought you weren’t trying to stand out,” Ben says, from where he’s perched cross-legged against Allison’s headboard.

Klaus nods thoughtfully. “You might have a point. But it’s so pretty.” He sighs. Maybe he should try the dress himself again. Just in case.

Somehow Ben reads his mind, because he says, “No, Klaus.”

He throws his goodbye hand in the air in exasperation. “Ugh, _fine_ , stifle my creative expression then. You monster.” Ben gives him a sarcastically sad look and mimes wiping away a tear. Klaus makes a face at him.

Allison frowns slightly, then holds up her notebook. _BEN?_

“Yes,” Klaus confirms, flapping his hand in Ben’s general direction. “He says hi.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You would if you could, don’t be a jerk.” Klaus sadly returns the dress to Allison’s closet. Perhaps something more muted. Allison looks lovely in jewel tones and there are certainly plenty to choose from here, but maybe they should really commit to it and go full-out frumpy. There’s an atrocious pair of pale-wash jeans in here that absolutely nobody could look stylish wearing, and therefore that nobody would ever expect Allison Hargreeves to be caught dead in. Perhaps that’s the way to go. He wonders why she even has these.

Ben makes a soft noise behind him but Klaus doesn’t turn until he has a selection of outfits in his arms, each more drab than the last. It’s his worst work, if he does say so, and he’s feeling somewhat proud of himself as he presents his options. Allison grimaces, which is how he knows he’s done his job. He rewards himself by stealing Allison’s high-waisted pants when she gets changed.

“What?” he asks, when she gives him a pointed, raised-eyebrow look. He spins in place, shakes his ass a little. “This way everyone will look at me instead of you. It’s foolproof.” She rolls her eyes but smiles, and lets Klaus administer his finishing touches, the headscarf and sunglasses. He looks her over quickly then kisses his fingertips. “Perfect. You look dreadful.” She laughs, soundless but genuine.

Klaus takes Allison’s hand as they walk to the bus stop, hello against her palm, and chatters about the department store that has reopened after Five’s misadventures, the high-end stores downtown that chase him away if he so much as breathes on their doorsteps and how excited he is to go all Pretty Women on their haughty asses. She listens and doesn’t bother responding, but that’s okay. Klaus can talk enough for them both.

His hands grow sweaty and his breath stutters as the bus takes them through a familiar neighbourhood. He knows who works these alleyways. He knows exactly what he can get here and he fingers the expensive scarf around his neck and tries not to think about how much he could get if he sold it.

Allison squeezes his hand tighter and he blinks and forces a smile. “We should go to a spa or something,” he babbles, distracting himself as much as her. “I love those little sandwiches. Ooh, or mani-pedis. I desperately need a refresh.” He flutters the fingers of his other hand as evidence. The bus rounds a corner and he can breathe again.

_LUNCH,_ Allison suggests, _THAT OVERPRICED SUSHI PLACE WITH THE FANCY TUNA._

As she flips the page to write it, Klaus catches a glimpse of what’s written on the one before. Underneath _BEN?_ he manages to make out, _I’M GLAD YOU TWO HAD EACH OTHER_.

Klaus doesn’t quite know what to do with that, but he feels it settling in his throat somewhere, his voice cut off as surely as Allison’s. He grunts, trying to clear it before she notices. It takes a bit of work, swallowing and quiet coughs, but he manages to croak out, “Yeah, sure, sushi. Love that stuff.”

Allison reaches to touch his cheek, turning his face towards hers. She can say a lot with just her eyes. The actress, Klaus thinks. Even if her life is based on words she never really needed them to get her point across. What’s that one Disney line? Don’t underestimate the importance of body language. And Allison’s a master. Klaus stares into her eyes, trying to read everything there, pulling out assurances and secrets and he presses his hand to hers, trapping it against his face.

“You guys look like you’re about to make out,” Ben says. “It’s super weird.”

Klaus throws his head back and makes a gargling sound. “You ruined a beautiful moment,” he accuses, pointing a dramatic, accusatory finger at Ben, then himself. “Do I _look_ like Luther to you?”

Allison pinches her lips together in an attempt to hide a smile, then runs her eyes pointedly up and down Klaus’s outfit and general presence. _NOT EVEN A LITTLE_ , she writes, and Klaus pretends to be offended.

Still. They disembark and stroll through the downtown fashion district, and Allison allows Klaus to cling to her arm, swanning him around like a trophy spouse while he exploits her for her credit card, which is exactly what he needed today. They walk arm-in-arm into the sushi restaurant, Klaus in the middle with Ben’s elbow phasing in and out through his own and their shopping bags bouncing against his thigh, and Klaus makes up some elaborate story about how his dear cousin is terribly shy and can’t they please sit in the back of the restaurant and oh don’t worry, he’ll order for the lady, and he sets his cup of sake aside for Ben to feel included, because neither of them can drink it but at least Klaus gets to eat.

_THIS IS FUN_ , Allison writes. _LET’S BRING VANYA NEXT TIME_. Klaus pictures their mousey sister drowning in a full-length couture gown and he smirks at the mental image. If he’s also smiling at the implication that there will be a next time, well, nobody needs to know that.

 

00.05

 

The nightmares don’t stop just because Klaus wants them to, unfortunately, and sobriety just makes them worse. Most evenings find him haunting the halls of the mansion like one of the ghosts that plague his every hour, asleep or awake, drifting from room to room in search of peace.

“I need a drink,” he groans to Ben, who doesn’t need to sleep at all, the lucky dead bastard.

“Absolutely not.”

“But _Beeeeen_ …”

“No. Don’t do it.”

Klaus just whines at him, because it’s 4 am and he’s too tired to do words, too restless to stay still. Plus, his old mp3 player finally kicked the bucket after years of abuse and he hasn’t yet been able to persuade Allison to buy or Five to steal a new one. So he can’t even distract himself with a bath and music. It’s tragic, really. He wonders what normal people do when insomnia hits, but then he remembers that normal people don’t have ghosts dogging their footsteps or post-traumatic stress from a war that ended years before they were born. Klaus is just special.

Yay.

Klaus throws himself as dramatically as he can manage onto one of their father’s stupid fancy couches and groans in Ben’s general direction. “This is torture,” he moans. “And I’ve been tortured, I know what I’m talking about.” Actually, given the choice between the screaming ghosts and Hazel and Cha-Cha -- Klaus would prefer the latter. At least people shut up sometimes. The dead never do.

“Just try to sleep,” Ben suggests, which is stupid advice and he knows it, and Klaus knows it, but they also both know that he has nothing else to offer. Klaus sighs, loudly.

“Fine,” he grouches, and squeezes his eyes shut, arms folded tight across his chest. “Here I go. Sleeping. Right now.”

Shockingly, it doesn’t work.

As Klaus lies there in the darkness of his closed eyelids, the room starts to close in around him, and the screaming picks up, veering from angry and lost to agonized screams of pain and terror. He hears the crashing rattle of machine guns and then a bomb whistles above him and he shouts and throws himself out of the way to dive for cover.

His elbow hits the hardwood floor and Klaus comes gasping back into the present, his breath stuttering and ripping out of him and he curls up with his back to the leg of the sofa and tries to remember how to breathe properly. Ben hovers, crouched above him with anxious hands raised but unable to touch, and Klaus has to fight the urge to reach for him, too.

“You’re okay,” Ben is saying like a mantra. “You’re okay. You’re here. You’re okay.” He has a guilty look to him that Klaus can’t parse, because none of this is Ben’s fault, obviously. Klaus likes to think that most of his problems are the fault of their dear departed dad. Other than the things he brings on himself. He tries not to look too closely at that second category.

“Fuck,” he says, his hands tight in his hair and his shirt damp with cold sweat. He can feel Dave’s blood under his fingernails, sticky against his scalp. “Fuckity goddamn _shit_.”

“You’re okay,” Ben says again, and Klaus kicks out at him with the energy of a coiled spring, knowing that his feet will go straight through Ben’s body and feeling immediately guilty about it anyway.

“I’m not,” he snaps, “none of this is fucking _okay_ , Ben, stop fucking saying that!”

“Well what do you want me to do, then?”

“Nothing. I don’t know. Just. Just leave me alone.” He curls in on himself, flashbacks of the mausoleum crowding on the backs of his eyelids and he flinches away, covers his head with his arms in a futile, instinctive gesture of protection. Doesn’t work when the threat is in his head. The ghosts wail his name.

“You know I’m not going to do that,” Ben says. He sounds frustrated. Yeah, well, he can join the club. Klaus whines into the crook of his elbow, verging on desperation.

There’s one little baggie of pills left in the house. He knows exactly where it is. He hid it behind the back panel of Five’s wardrobe when he was still missing, and now that Five’s returned, Klaus hasn’t wanted to risk the little psycho cutting his balls off or something for creeping around in his room.

The pills call to him like a beacon and he swallows, his throat suddenly dry. He should wake Diego, he thinks. He should get Luther to knock him out. He should go drown himself in the bathtub.

He scrambles to his feet and makes for the staircase. Ben shouts at him but damnit, Klaus is weak and tired and maybe just this one more time won’t hurt. Just to get some peace and quiet, just to sleep for once without the past taunting him -- his own and everyone else’s.

“Sorry,” he whispers into the hallway, in case Dave is listening. “Sorry, sorry, I need this. Just this once. I need it.”

“Klaus, don’t!” Ben yells behind him, but he doesn’t stop.

He almost rips Five’s door open before remembering that it’s the middle of the night and if Five is sensible (hah) and sane (hah hah), he’ll be asleep. Or, knowing him, scribbling on the walls or something. He pauses for only a second, long enough for Ben to catch up and try and fail to grab Klaus’s arm, and then standing on tiptoe, Klaus slowly and carefully turns the doorknob.

It doesn’t squeak. The house may be old, but Mom always kept it in good shape, all of the hinges well-oiled. The door swings open soundlessly, and Klaus creeps into the room like the Grinch stealing Christmas.

The wardrobe is right there. Right next to the door. Klaus’s skin is on fire and his heart thumps in anticipation as he reaches for the cupboard door.

“No,” Five says. Klaus freezes. He barely even breathes, waiting for… oh, for Five to shoot him or make some devastatingly scathing comment or something. But it never comes. Klaus swallows his alarm and peeks out of the corners of his eyes towards the bed.

Five is twisted up in his blankets and his fancy little suit pyjamas, and as Klaus watches him, he throws his head to one side and repeats, “No.”

“He’s asleep,” Klaus whispers to himself. He feels a grin spreading across his face. This’ll be easy. So easy. He ignores Ben and opens the wardrobe, pushing aside hangars of identical Umbrella Academy suits.

Five whimpers and the sound of it cuts like a knife, pins Klaus to the floor like a beetle. Call him sentimental but he never was any good at dealing with his siblings’ emotions. It made him frantic and upset and desperate to cheer them up and he thought that instinct was well and truly buried, but then Five jerks against his sheets and makes another strangled, unhappy noise.

Klaus closes his eyes and pushes his forehead against the edge of the door. “Aw, shit,” he mutters. It takes almost everything he has to turn away and take the few careful steps to Five’s bedside.

“He’s having a nightmare,” Ben says, and Klaus rolls his eyes because no shit, Sherlock. “What are you going to do?”

Ideally, Klaus thinks, he’s going to ignore this whole situation and go get high, but he knows he’s lying even to himself.

Five looks young. Like, really young, because even with his face scrunched up in the throes of a nightmare, his expression doesn’t have that eerie, mature control that’s been the norm since he got back. Klaus reaches out to smooth away the angry frown between Five’s eyebrows almost without thinking. Five twitches but then his face relaxes just a little, and he mumbles something that Klaus doesn’t catch.

Klaus can’t imagine what Five must have gone through, those decades in an apocalypse and as a time-travelling assassin. One trip back in time was enough to fuck Klaus up pretty good, and at least he had somebody to talk to. Someone to love. Five did it all alone and he puts up a convincing front during the day, but Klaus has had enough PTSD-inspired dreams by now to recognize the symptoms.

“I don’t know what to do,” he whispers to Ben, who raises his shoulders in a shrug, because clearly, Ben doesn’t, either.

Five flinches in his dream and Klaus touches on reflex, cupping his hand around Five’s cheek and blinking in surprise at the never-shaved smoothness of it.

They were close, once, as children. Always next to each other for photos, Four-Five-Six, and Five would stand there with that smug, sardonic grin and let Klaus lean on his shoulder and whisper snarky comments in his ear. Klaus spent years after Five’s disappearance trying to find him in the ether until it all became too much and he locked his powers away behind a haze of narcotics.

“I missed him,” Klaus confesses in the darkness of the near-dawn, barely more than a whisper, but under his hand Five’s jaw jumps.

Five blinks blearily up at Klaus. He starts to frown again, and Klaus hurries to shush him. He really doesn’t want to deal with the fallout of being caught creeping on his brother as he sleeps.

“Shh, shh,” he murmurs, “go back to sleep. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

“Hypocrite,” Ben says without malice. Five blinks once more, then closes his eyes. His skin is clammy and his hair is matted to his head with sweat, but in a few moments, his face goes slack and his breathing is even and peaceful.

Klaus feels like crying.

He doesn’t, though.

Instead, he tidies up Five’s blankets, tucking him in in a clumsy imitation of childhood memories. He unsticks Five’s bangs from his forehead and brushes them away from his face. And he very carefully doesn’t look towards the wardrobe as he tiptoes back out of the room and closes the door behind him. He lets out a long breath, following it down to squat on the floor. He scrubs his hands through his hair.

“Klaus?” Ben says, his voice low even though nobody else in this house can hear him. “Are you okay?”

“No.”

Klaus doesn’t know how long he sits on the floor outside of Five’s room, not intending to listen for his brother to have another nightmare even if that’s what he ends up doing. Finally, when Five has long been silent, when Klaus’s hips are starting to get stiff and uncomfortable and it’s starting to feel too much like a Vietnamese foxhole for his liking, he peels himself off the wall and runs a bath so hot it hurts and filled with enough bubbles that he can block out the rest of the world.

He’s still itchy and afraid and so, so tired. Sunrise finds him still in the tub, dozing fitfully in water gone bone-cold. There’s a terrific crick in his neck but he can’t find the energy to care.

The bathroom door slams open with a sound like a gunshot and Klaus startles back into his body, gasping. Someone throws a towel over his face.

“Get out of there before you pass out and drown, you idiot,” Five snaps.

“Aw, I knew you cared!” Klaus yells at his retreating back, but Five’s gone. Klaus groans loudly, flopping his head back then forwards, massaging his neck, and regretting his life choices.

“You made it through the night,” Ben says, and there’s a not-insignificant part of Klaus that wonders how many more he can handle.

 

00.07

 

When Klaus hears the scratchy music of a record being played, he assumes it’s Luther. It’s early in the afternoon and Klaus’s siblings are scattered, around the house or elsewhere, he doesn’t know. The only one he keeps track of is Ben -- well, really, that’s more the other way around. Ben and Klaus look at each other, then towards the hallway.

“Does Luther listen to classical music?” Klaus wonders out loud. He’d thought Luther’s collection was more old pop and scattered classic rock, but hey, before the apocalypse didn’t happen, Klaus hadn’t lived in this house for years. Maybe Luther’s branched out.

“Reminds me of Sundays,” Ben mutters, and Klaus wrinkles his nose. Good old Sir Reginald always did like to listen to his concertos and suites and whatevers on the weekend. Sunday morning music, Ben had called it when they were eight years old and everyone but Vanya had long since gotten sick of it.

“Maybe Luther’s feeling nostalgic?”

This piece doesn’t sound familiar, though, none of the regal Beethoven or bouncing Vivaldi. There’s something in the faintly echoing music that’s almost… creepy. It’s weird; Klaus likes it.

Then he hears a tricky violin riff, and that’s when it clicks into place. “Vanya,” he says.

Vanya hasn’t touched her violin since the night at the theatre when she almost destroyed the world. Klaus supposes it’s guilt; hell, he feels guilty and he didn’t even do anything except try to save everyone’s lives, thank you very much. He’s never been quite sure what to do with Vanya, and that hasn’t changed. Before, she was too quiet, too boring, too much a background piece in their super-powered lives. Now, the quiet is different, isolation and rage and while he does like his sister -- loves her, even, probably -- her whole aura makes the hair on his arms stand up.

She’s angry. She tries to control it but she never learned how, and Klaus tries very hard not to think that it’s unfair that Vanya got to be on drugs for her entire life, but when Klaus does it he’s a useless junkie and not worth anyone’s time. He never thought that they had anything in common as kids, but he can find so many similarities between them now that it makes him uneasy and reluctantly, painfully sympathetic.

He supposes that they’ve always both found an escape in music, and wonders why he didn’t realize that before now.

“Let’s go say hi,” he decides, through the door before his common sense (he likes to call it 'Ben') can kick in and tell him to leave her alone. He sees Ben wince out of the corner of his eye, but weirdly, Ben doesn’t say anything.

Vanya’s door is open, which is familiar ground. She always left it open when they were kids. Maybe so that everyone would hear her playing her violin, or maybe in a quiet hope that someone would actually come in and talk to her. Klaus doesn’t think he ever took that silent invitation. Five did, and Ben, sometimes. Maybe Allison. Never Klaus, though.

He peeks into her room. Vanya is sitting on her bed, back rounded and eyes closed as she listens to the music. There’s a slight frown on her face, but it looks like concentration rather than anger. He hopes, anyway. The music stutters through a trill and crescendos and Klaus finds that he likes it. It clears away the muttering and whispering in his head and he’s able to hear his own thoughts without yelling.

“Never woulda pegged you for a spooky music kind of gal.” He wiggles his fingers around the word ‘spooky’. “What is it?”

Vanya startles. Everything in her room rocks violently, and the needle skips off the record with a discordant scratch that plunges them into silence save for the heavy rolling of an upturned lamp. Klaus cringes.

“Sorry,” Vanya says, wide-eyed with her hand over her heart until it restarts, and then she’s skittering off the bed to right the lamp and pick up the other odds and ends that have fallen to the floor. “You surprised me.”

“You don’t say,” Klaus says. He’s tempted to laugh at the absurdity of making everything in a room throw itself to the floor in his presence, but perhaps that’s in poor taste. He watches Vanya as she stands awkwardly, passing a treble clef paperweight between her hands.

“Did, um,” she starts. Her voice is still unsure, still quiet, but without that unnerving flatness she always used to have. There’s a power behind it. A personality, finally. “Did you need something?”

Klaus decides to invite himself the rest of the way into the room. The combined stares of Ben and Vanya make him a little twitchy, but he ignores that. “Oh, well, I’d really like a pony, now that you mention it.” And a full night’s sleep, but frankly Vanya spontaneously conjuring a pint-sized horse into her bedroom seems more likely.

It’s a weak joke and Vanya stares at him for a second before cracking a small smile. “Can’t help you there, sorry.”

“Oh cruel fate,” he sighs. He makes himself comfortable on the floor, because Ben is in the only chair and even though he has no problem with invading Allison’s space, or Diego’s, he feels weird about sitting on Vanya’s bed.

There’s a new violin case leaning against the bedpost, and he nudges it with his toe. “Why haven’t you played it yet?”

Vanya’s gaze locks onto the case. She bites her lip, hunches her shoulder, but there’s such naked desire in her eyes that Klaus feels kind of like a voyeur, and not in the fun way.

“I don’t think it would be right,” she says softly, and this time Klaus does laugh.

“When have any of us actually done anything that was right?” He spreads his hands to illustrate the point, then gestures at himself to further drive it home. “I mean almost destroying the world was kind of an oopsie, but it’s not like the rest of us haven’t fucked up before. We practically invented the word ‘dysfunctional.’ And look at us now!”

“Speak for yourself,” his dead brother says.

“No offense,” Vanya says, “but that doesn’t really make me feel better.”

Klaus feigns shock. “Excusez-moi? Are you saying that you _don’t_ want to be an emotionally-stunted asshole with daddy issues?”

Vanya’s lips twitch in what could conceivably be a smile. “Well, if you put it that way.” She sits down on the floor, cross-legged in front of Klaus, looking up at him through her eyelashes. “I think I’m already qualified.”

He huffs another humourless laugh. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

They sit in silence in an uncomfortable tableau, Vanya picking at a loose thread on the cuff of her shirt and Klaus wondering idly if it’s possible to get contact awkwardness like it is with a high. He has no idea what he’s supposed to say to Vanya, can’t recall any real conversations between the two of them, and saying, 'Hey, sorry I let Luther lock you up,' isn’t exactly a great opener.

Instead, he slaps the tops of his thighs -- he’s wearing his pleather pants today, so the sound is delightfully loud -- and rocks to his feet. “What was that you were listening to?” he asks as he skips the step back to the record player, which is still spinning listlessly.

Vanya watches him with elbows on knees. “The Firebird,” she mumbles.

Ben makes a noise of recognition, and in an eerie moment of synchronicity both he and Vanya say together, “Stravinsky.”

“How did you know that?” Klaus asks Ben, because when in the last thirteen years would Klaus have exposed him to anywhere he could acquire knowledge of classical music? The fanciest place Klaus has been recently was the alleyway behind a Red Lobster.

They throw out all the leftover biscuits at the end of the night. Great place for dumpster diving.

Vanya’s eyebrows draw together. “Well, it’s my record,” she answers, and Klaus doesn’t bother to correct her. Instead, he just places the needle back into its groove, and the room is filled with oboes and violins once again.

Klaus starts shuffling his feet and swaying his hips. The Firebird is clearly not a song meant for modern dancing, which, rude, but it’s fun to try. He attempts to twerk and throws in a cycle or two of the chicken dance for good measure.

“Oh my god,” Ben groans in embarrassed dismay. “Please stop.”

“Oh my god,” Vanya says from behind her hand. She’s trying not to laugh, from her place on the floor. “What are you doing?”

Klaus wiggles his butt in a fashion entirely inappropriate for the music. “Dancing, obviously.” He switches to an eyebrow-waggle and holds his hand out to Vanya.

They have more in common than he thought. And music is as good a place as any to start.

She looks up at him with wary amusement. “No,” she says.

“Vanya,” Klaus sing-songs. He flaps his hand in her face. “Vaaaanya!”

“Oh my god,” she says again, but she reaches for his hand and lets Klaus pull her to her feet and against his chest. He immediately leads them into a disastrous attempt at a waltz. The time signature is wrong and they step on each other’s feet and stumble when the tempo changes, and Vanya’s hand squeezes Klaus’s hello tighter and they grab onto each other’s shirts when their steps falter. The room is far too small for this and they can’t do much more than spin in place, or else risk knocking everything to the floor again. It’s ridiculous and silly and not a conversation, but Klaus has never heard Vanya laugh like this before, and she leans into him like she can’t quite remember what it’s like to hold onto someone, either.

 

00.06

 

Ben pushes with terrifying, single-minded determination, playing patty-cake on the floor until Klaus’s hands are red and tender from clapping. Hello-goodbye hello-goodbye hello-goodbye, over and over and over. It gives him a headache, trying to focus for so long, like the pain from exercising a new muscle, but Klaus won’t give up, either.

Their hands clap together and Klaus huffs out a breath and a half-smile at the accomplishment. It’s gotten easier, these past few weeks, with the sobriety and the practice, and the way Ben’s eyes light up like street lamps when they connect is worth every drop of effort.

“We got there faster this time,” Ben says, without the faint ghostly echo that Klaus has gotten so used to hearing in his voice. He smiles brighter than the sun. Klaus never sees him this happy -- hell, never sees any of his siblings this happy, can’t remember what Five looks likes with a genuine smile, what it sounds like when Diego laughs. Ben has more reason for solemnity than most, but when their hands touch, he smiles like Klaus has given him the world.

In a manner of speaking, that’s exactly what they’re doing.

This time, instead of separating and clapping again, Klaus twists his palms a half-step, curling his fingers into the spaces between Ben’s and squeezing tight. Ben’s mouth relaxes into a gentle ‘o’ of surprise and he squeezes back. Klaus can feel the strain of maintaining the hold pulling in the back of his mind, but he grits his teeth and bears it out.

Ben’s thumb traces a slow line over Klaus’s knuckle and Klaus wants to cry. And laugh.

“I can’t believe you had the power to do this the whole time,” Ben says, soft, and he doesn’t say it like an accusation but Klaus can’t take it any other way. Klaus has always had a hard time with solitude, in a cruel twist of fate -- he can’t get the dead to leave him alone, can’t get the living to pay attention. He thrives on touch and attention and it’s led him into more bad choices than even Ben knows, but at least the choice was always his to make. If Klaus wants to find some guy with a nice body and a bed and low standards, well, he can do that.

Ben had that choice taken away when he died.

For what is not even close to the first time, Klaus wishes that he could give Ben a hug.

Realization hits him like a truck. He feels his eyes go round and he says, with feeling, “Oh _shit!_ ”

“What?” Ben asks, alarmed. “What’s --”

“I’m a fucking idiot,” Klaus announces, and then he bites down as hard as he can on his focus and throws himself at his brother.

They hit the floor in a tangle of limbs and a harmony of grunts, but Ben cushions his fall and Klaus rolls them until he can get his arms around Ben’s middle and tuck his face into the side of Ben’s neck and ramble, “What the hell have we been doing, aren’t you supposed to be the smart one, why didn’t we think --”

“Oh,” Ben says, in a voice so small and watery that Klaus rears back in alarm. Ghosts can’t cry but Ben looks like he would if he could and Klaus’s sibling instinct panics.

“Nonono, don’t do that, Ben, c’mon, man.” He shifts so that he’s holding Ben’s face between his hands, their noses almost touching. Ben looks like he’s just been slapped and Klaus starts to laugh, quiet puffs of breath that make Ben’s eyelashes flutter. “Don’t cry,” he says, and something drips from his own cheek onto Ben’s.

“Hypocrite,” Ben says in that same choked voice. Klaus nods, and Ben wipes the tear from their cheeks.

It’s like breathing again after being underwater. They’ve been together, inseparable for thirteen years, but never able to touch. Klaus presses his forehead against Ben’s, and Ben pushes back. Ben’s hands catch in the hollows of Klaus’s shoulder blades and Klaus cradles Ben’s head and they manage to rearrange themselves in a more upright position, kneeling on Klaus’s floor cushions and not letting go. Klaus is never letting go, fuck everything else.

Ben is cold, and there’s no lingering scent on his skin. There’s no heartbeat for Klaus to feel and no breath against his cheek but that doesn’t matter because it’s _Ben._ Klaus was always the touchy-feely one in the family, always throwing arms around shoulders and sitting too close and knocking knees together. Ben tolerated it better than the others. He’d read a book and let Klaus lay in his lap or drape himself over his shoulders, but he was never the one to seek out touch. Not like Klaus.

But Ben’s still human, dead or not, and thirteen years of touch starvation is a hell of a drug. He clings to Klaus just as tightly as Klaus clings to him.

Speaking of touch starvation.

There’s no sound of a knock at the door, but then Five’s voice says, “Klaus, I need you to -- Ben?”

Ben reacts like he’s been shot, flinching and staring at Five with shock at being acknowledged. “Can you see me?” His hands tighten in Klaus’s shirt even as they sit back from each other. Klaus rubs his shoulder comfortingly.

Five blinks, and nods, and stares at Ben like he’s a particularly interesting equation or a margarita or something. “You look much more solid than last time,” he says. His hands are in his pockets, head tilted slightly to one side. Curious, studying. His eyes slide between them and Klaus can practically see the calculations he’s running in his head, the nerd. “Are you tangible?”

Klaus slips. His hands fall through Ben’s body, and it’s not the first time that he’s lost the thread during their practice but it sucks every time and this feels worse than most. “Sorry,” he mutters to Ben, who pulls back and shakes his head and says that it’s okay, as if Klaus didn’t see him starting to reach a hand out to Five.

“Where’d he go?” Five demands. “Klaus, bring him back.”

“He’s still here,” Klaus mutters, stung. He massages at the truly epic headache building behind his eyes. “It’s hard, okay? Just gimme a sec, old man.”

“It’s fine,” Ben says, even though it’s not.

Ben has given Klaus a lot, this last decade and change. Now it’s time for Klaus to return the favour. He takes a deep breath in and raspberries it through his lips, and he closes his eyes tight and reaches for Ben’s hand. It connects, and he sighs in relief. He pulls Ben’s hand close and presses it into his chest, held close to his heart like the precious thing it is.

“Hey, Five,” Ben says with a smile in his voice. “Welcome home.”

Klaus laughs at that, and Ben flickers but stays. Five exhales through his nose, his lips curling up in that little catlike grin of his. “Yeah, thanks. You too.”

This time, when Ben reaches, Five can see him, and he can react. He hesitates, because he’s Five, but capitulates quickly, because it’s Ben. Gentle, snarky Ben, who glued them all together with his even temperament and inbred kindness and never asked for much in return, but when he did, he was as irresistible as Allison.

Five kneels down beside them and lets Ben pull him into a loose, one-armed hug. It’s stiff, on Five’s end, but when Ben ruffles his perfectly-combed hair, Five grumbles and relaxes into the embrace like the paradox he is.

Klaus can’t help himself. “Well isn’t this sweet,” he coos, and he throws his free arm around Five’s shoulders and pulls them all together in a squishy hug. Five’s face mashes against Ben’s shoulder and Klaus places his chin on the top of Five’s head. He rocks the three of them back and forth. “Just like old times.”

Five squirms and shoves his pointy elbows into Klaus’s side until it hurts enough for Klaus to let him go, and he glares like a puffed-up cat. “When have I _ever_ let you do that?” he spits.

“Well,” Klaus hums, genuinely thinking about it. He leans into Ben, and tries not to laugh at Five doing the same on Ben’s other side, despite all his protests. And okay, maybe Five is right, _technically_ , but that’s not exactly what he meant. Klaus remembers the three of them grouping together, away from the drama of One-Two-Three. Five would sneak out for snacks and they’d gather on the pillows on Klaus’s floor. Ben and Five would read their textbooks or have smart conversations about things that Klaus didn’t understand, and he’d ask them questions or get drunk on stolen wine and nap curled up between them.

Why anyone was surprised that Klaus spent the last thirteen years high as a kite after losing them both, he doesn’t know. Trauma often precludes addiction. And he would know. He’s been to rehab.

“So these probability maps,” Ben starts, and Klaus rolls his eyes and tunes out of the conversation.

Five stays far longer than Klaus would have expected, but then again, there are extenuating circumstances, here. It gets harder and harder to hold on, to keep Ben solid, and by the end of it Klaus has his eyes squeezed shut and breathes in shallow gasps through his nose. His entire world tunnels down to just Ben, Ben, Ben.

And then he blacks out.

He wakes up sometime later, groaning into a pillow and wondering who let him get so blackout drunk that he can’t even remember the drinks, but the wicked hangover doesn’t lie.

“Beeeeen,” he moans. He doesn’t want to open his eyes in case there’s a light on. Klaus always sleeps with a light on and right now he is thoroughly resentful of his fear of the dark. Darkness is his friend. Darkness won’t stab him through the eyeballs and into his brain.

“You look like shit,” Ben’s voice says, and he sounds far too happy about it. It’s enough to make Klaus crack his eyelids open so that he can glare. Luckily, it seems to be the middle of the night, so at least there’s no sun up yet. Hooray for small victories.

“Thanks, dickhead,” he mutters, and groans again. “What did I drink?”

Ben blinks at him. “What?”

“I feel like I --” he stops. Looks up at Ben. Then yells, “You gave me a _ghost hangover_ , you asshole!” Klaus slaps at him like a petulant child, and Ben laughs and catches his flailing hands.

“I’d apologize,” Ben starts, with a wide grin on his face, “but I’m not sorry at all.”

Klaus rolls away from him in a dramatic huff and hugs one of the floor pillows. “I hate you.”

“Liar.” Ben’s sitting on the edge of his bed, and he watches without moving as Klaus decides that he should get up from the floor to sleep off the stupid ghost hangover properly. Klaus stumbles out of his pants and jacket and has to crawl around Ben to get into the bed, which is novel. He’s tempted to tell Ben to go to his own room, but he knows Ben can’t.

Besides, he doesn’t actually want Ben to leave. “Can you get the light?” he mumbles instead, flapping his goodbye hand in the general direction of his lava lamp. He hears Ben sigh, but a moment later, the room is full of a soft purple glow and Klaus grins through the headache. “Hell yeah, I love this new power.”

Ben climbs over him to settle into the corner, knees tucked up to his chest. “Me too,” he says softly. Klaus curls a hand around his ankle, just because he can. He feels a hand touching his head, combing fingers through his hair, and relaxes into it with a happy sigh.

If the ghosts of war and strangers come to him during the night, Klaus doesn’t remember. For the first time in months, he doesn’t wake until morning, with yellow sunlight behind the curtains and a faint memory of someone rubbing his back, petting his hair, and whispering the demons away.

**Author's Note:**

> I've watched the Netflix series three times in as many weeks and I have a lot of feelings about it, you guys.
> 
> You can catch some of my yelling into the void about how much I love it over on Twitter: [@paxlegomenon](https://twitter.com/paxlegomenon)


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